Emergency as Security

Analysis of the historical context of the first “new imperialism” (Britain in the late 1880s) along with theorizing the normative, psychological, and socio-economic transformations of neoliberal imperialism and U.S. exceptionalism. Also included are the gender dynamics of militarism: analysis of the “men of the frontier” syndrome; relationships between paternalism, effeminization, and imperialism; and, beginnings of the queering of empire. Links between imperialism, ecology, and environmentalism, and the unequal environmental exchange of the contemporary world system also come into focus. Retrospective analysis of the watershed events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in 2005 raises not only the specter of “humanitarian intervention” but also the rise of the nonprofit-industrial complex. Chapters on the military-industrial complex address the domestication of militarization in policing and surveillance and the militarization of entertainment media. Finally we consider guidelines for an anti-imperial anthropology.